Science in every aspect is now in the sights of Right-Wing deny-everything lobby. I was horrified by Newsnight last night. Nature magazine is now under attack, as well as the East Anglian climate unit, and there is a whiff of McCarthyism or even Lysenkoism in the air. The scientists don't deliver the results the powers would like: let the science and the scientists be changed. Of course, the politicians have officially been on message on climate change but the right wing lobbies are scenting triumph now. Neither the BBC's Science nor Environment editor has tried to explain the process of science in all this and I haven't heard any message from the Royal Society or the international scientific community. 
     There is no need for an “inquiry” into the East Anglian Climate Unit. Every scientific paper published in a journal like Nature is subject to criticism by the work and the papers that follow it. That is what science consists of: an ongoing criticism of all previous work. Science doesn’t do inquiries: science already IS one big inquiry. Unfortunately, the science community needs to learn that the rest of the world works in an entirely different, sly and deceitful, way.  Science has got to lose its innocence and learn to play streetwise in public; if not it’s going to lose everything.
 


Comments

Andrea Ford
12/07/2010 09:04

I am so glad I am not the only scientific minded person who thinks this. How long can they remain in ivory towers without either fighting back or changing the way things are done? What will it take for institutions and science personnel to realise what is actually happening? I would so like to stick them in a bag and shake them up!

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Peter Forbes
12/10/2010 04:03

Things have turned even worse than I feared. Climate change has almost fallen off the agenda

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